


wish for dreamless nights

by antagonists



Series: Kannagara [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10869129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: Akira shakes his head, closes his eyes; even the sunlight through thick canopy is too bright for him in this moment. He thinks of eyes like fire, of wings blacker than darkness itself, of sinister and echoing laughter.





	wish for dreamless nights

**Author's Note:**

> the best method of studying for finals is writing fic... right..

* * *

 

 

“You ask that spirit for too much help,” Futaba says when Akira visit her. She’s kneeling by the altar, face hidden by her draping hair, but he knows her expression would be one of extreme disapproval.

 

“What makes you say that?” he asks mildly, patting her arm to let her know which side he’ll be sitting on.

 

“You forget I can see some of your dreams,” she says accusingly. Quiet wisps of incense smoke fade into the air as she shifts to face him, close enough that their knees are touching. “A-and, well, it’s not like I’m peeking on _purpose_ , but they’re really hard to ignore.”

 

Akira shrugs. “They come with the profession, I guess.”

 

“You could get Inari to eat them instead.”

 

“That would hurt him,” Akira refuses. “I’m not going to put Yusuke through that kind of pain.”

 

“But—”

 

“Futaba,” he says firmly. “Too much would kill him.”

 

“So you’d sell yourself to a baku,” she says, hands clenching. Although she cannot see, it is still as though she’s staring right into his soul. She then lowers her head, as if to look at the bandages around his fingers. “You don’t know what it could do to you.”

 

“I’ll be fine.”

 

“There are more following you, Akira. More than before.” When Futaba lifts her unseeing gaze, he can almost see the reflections of all the spirits he knows he has either collected, or outright forgot were following him around. “What, are you going to make contracts with _all_ of those? One human can only do so much, even as a priest.”

 

“I’ve been doing fine so far,” he mutters, and winces when Futaba pushes at his forehead with a finger.

 

He knows, of course, that the more he binds spirits into contracts with him, the more difficult it will be to escape them once he finally dies. But this is all he has known.

 

The last nightmare had been about that awful, cold prison, again. He tries not to call Arsene too often for dreams he doesn’t wake up half-blind and screaming from, just since he knows that too many gaps in his memory will make him that much more prone to possession. Sometimes—somehow—despite it all, the baku’s crooked grin and disheveled wings are better company than anything else. Softer dreams in exchange for whispers from the world of spirits; nightmares for a dull silence and brief peace of mind.

 

Either way, Arsene _understands_.

 

“I’ll snitch on you to Makoto,” Futaba says slyly when she realizes Akira is quite adamant on this matter. It isn’t easy talking him out of things, much less so on topics regarding his own sense of self-preservation, or lack thereof.

 

“Ah,” Akira says, flustered, “I’ll just. I’ll avoid her temple for the rest of my life then, I suppose.”

 

This makes Futaba giggle. Only Akira could stand fearless against demons and ghosts, but still cower at the mention of Makoto’s rough affection.

 

“Here,” he says after a while more of less serious chat, taking leaf-wrapped takoyaki and dango from his sleeve. “You probably haven’t eaten, right?”

 

It’s still sort of amazing how deftly Futaba can unwrap the bundles, but she’s always been rather fond of the snacks he brings back from other villages. He says his farewells and drops another bundle of anpan by the entrance.

 

“Tell your old man not to overwork himself,” Akira says as he leaves.

 

Before he can fully step off of the stone, Futaba presses a charm into his hands, bright with red ink and formidable protection spells. He grasps it tightly as he walks along the worn path towards the West. Before him, it is as through the shadows are quaking in fear.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He is, not unexpectedly, hit in the face when he drops by the temple Makoto lives at.

 

She’s apologizing profusely, which would make him laugh if he weren’t trying to staunch his bloody nose in some rags. Some people might find it strange to see a priestess so well-trained in physical fighting, but he isn’t surprised; they fight off spirits just as frequently priests do, after all. They are better at it their male counterparts a lot of the times—better at gauging spiritual air without bias and in helping others.

 

Makoto has tried teaching him the ways of archery before, but it had only ended in a few broken arrows and him nearly shooting someone in the temple. From what he’s gleaned from their conversations, Sae is still the better archer.

 

“Sorry,” Makoto says again, patting his shoulder awkwardly. “Futaba sent me a letter, you know, about how you’re not taking care of yourself. I got angry.”

 

“I can tell,” he replies nasally, still holding the cloth up to his nose. “You still punch really hard.”

 

“Sorry,” she repeats, and he shakes his head.

 

“I know where you’re coming from,” he says. “I’m not going to ask you to understand.”

 

“I do. A bit,” she says nervously. They’ve entertained the idea of being involved with each other more than once, and it’s still there. Perhaps it is due to their mutual experiences with the spiritual world that they understand each other’s weaknesses and strengths, how they both feed off of aspects of the metaphysical plane and simultaneously flee from it. But then again—he’s never in one place for very long, and she fears the dark he wears, the black he consumes. “It’s hard to explain.”

 

Akira eyes her carefully. It’s not hard to tell, at least to him. Sometimes, when he looks at her, it is similar to peering into a mirror. “You’re seeing a demon.”

 

“Don’t just say that,” she groans, sits heavily on the ground. “Yes, I am.”

 

“Have I met them before?”

 

“Probably,” Makoto says, “with how often you go in and out of Yomi and places near it. She’s mentioned seeing a few priests here and there. You’re quite hard to notice when you actually try to blend in.”

 

He sits beside her, walking fingers up her dark sleeves as he grins. “She pretty?”

 

“Do _not_ ,” Makoto sighs, but does not lean away from the touch, even when he begins to play with her hair. “We’re not talking about this. Let’s go back to you and your apparent lack of self-control. What’s with all those spirits tagging along?”

 

He shrugs at this, but Makoto has never taken his vague deflections for an answer. Akira hisses when she grips his wrist tightly, averting his eyes when she frowns at the bruises along his arm, his bandaged hands. They aren’t from injuries, necessarily; Ryuji just isn’t all too familiar with being gentle, but to anyone else they look like unpleasant marks on his skin. And the spells he casts aren’t always meant to be done by human hands, anyways.

 

Akira hasn’t explained who exactly he’s been seeing, what kind of dreams he’s been having, and it’s probably for the best.

 

The priestess undoes the bandages around his fingers, frown growing more severe the longer she glares at them. The cuts aren’t pretty and make his lacerated hands look as though they’re covered in crude red gloves, but he finds them a necessary sacrifice for some things. Banishing spirits is one thing—begging something akin to a god to devour his dreams is another.

 

“I dreamt of that prison again,” he says when the silence seems as though it will choke him otherwise. “You know the one.”

 

Makoto glances at him, already moving to lather stinging salve onto the reopened wounds. She’s always prepared, though it might just be since he has a habit of showing up wounded in some manner all the time. “The one in blue? I’ve seen it once in a vision, but I barely remember it.”

 

“It’s,” he swallows, “an unkind place.”

 

“Surely not worse than Yomi,” Makoto says, but she seems doubtful.

 

Akira shakes his head, closes his eyes; even the sunlight through thick canopy is too bright for him in this moment. He thinks of eyes like fire, of wings blacker than darkness itself, of sinister and echoing laughter. “Yomi is a spirit’s endpoint. Suffering for sure, but this… isn’t like that.”

 

“I won’t ask you to explain,” she says softly, touch gentle as she rewraps his hands with clean bandages. “I’ll prepare a guest room tonight. The head priest will understand.”

 

“Thank you,” Akira whispers, and falls silent. Beyond the noise of the forest and temple bells, something less loving calls to him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 


End file.
